Italy's PM rules out sending the army into Naples

By
Euronews

Meeting with local government leaders in Naples, Italy’s Prime Minister Romano Prodi has for now ruled out sending in the army to tackle the city’s crime wave. Instead he says he will send extra police. MPs have spoken of deploying a thousand more officers and putting in more CCTV cameras.

There have been a spate of murders in Naples – at least seven in the past five days alone. But Prodi says these have nothing to do with an amnesty earlier in the year, which saw thousands of prisoners released from the city’s jails.

“There is no statistical data confirming that the amnesty is the cause of this situation,” Romano Prodi said.

Italy’s Interior Minister is visiting the city on Friday to unveil a new plan to restore order.

Prodi favours a broad, long-term approach targetting the problem of under-development in the country’s south.

“These problems are very serious but they are nothing but one aspect of a whole phenomenon that dangeriously creeps into the whole of society of southern Italy,” Italy’s Prime Minister said.

Many of the killings are related to turf wars between rivals in the local crime network, the Camorra.

Prodi says Naples needs to learn respect for the rule of law and recommends starting early, teaching it to children in schools.